Excellent food is a given at club and resort properties. But today’s members and guests are also craving convenient carryout options that they can “taketh away” as well.
Whether playing a round on the golf course or coming home from work, today’s members and guests are increasingly busy and looking for convenient food solutions. That lifestyle has made carry-out more than a nicety for club and resort properties to offer—it’s become a necessity.
SUMMING IT UP• Stock grab-and-go items at halfway houses or on the beverage cart to keep game momentum going. • Offer complete family “meal kits” for carryout. • Prepare cold carryout items in advance of the holiday pick-up rush. |
At the Country Club of York (Pa.), carryout meals account for 15% of the club’s just under $1 million in a la carte sales, according to Executive Chef Gregory Mummert. The biggest cost of offering carryout is the packaging, so he adds a 9% gratuity to cover it.
“Over the past eight years, the call for carryout has grown immensely, and the cost of paper goods keeps escalating,” he explains. “With the gratuity, we can give our members the convenience they want and offset the packaging expense.”
The Country Club of York’s members can order anything they want from the main kitchen, along with something that isn’t even on the menu. “You won’t find pizza anywhere on the menu, but we sell a ton of it for carryout,” Mummert says.
Another carryout favorite is chicken parmigiana—one member, Mummert notes, orders it 12 servings at a time.
On the golf course, most players want to avoid slowing down, so Mummert stocks the halfway house with packaged sandwiches, wraps and hot dogs on a roller grill. However, if members would prefer something from the dining room menu, all they have to do is call, and it will be delivered.
Creating a Monster
At Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Country Club, Executive Chef Cynthia Romstadt includes sandwich specials on the golf course beverage cart. The halfway house is set up as a full-service concession offering build-your-own sandwiches from meat sliced at the clubhouse, as well as hot dogs.During pool season, Cedar Rapids CC’s cabana features grab-and-go items such as pre-made sandwiches, hot dogs, brats, and mini-meat and cheese boards. Two favorite grab-and-go selections are the Asian chicken salad (made with a vinaigrette-based dressing instead of mayonnaise, so it’s more summer-friendly), and a giant Monster Cookie made with rice cereal, peanut butter, chopped nuts, chocolate chips and M&Ms.
“The cookies are big enough to feed four people, and there are times we can’t keep up with the demand,” Romstadt says.
Lunch carryout from the dining room is also popular at Cedar Rapids CC, with many members ordering food for their entire office. Soup, especially the club’s signature Cheeseburger Chowder, has a fan base all its own. “We originally ran it as a soup du jour on our menu, but it sold so well and was requested by so many members, we put it on the regular menu,” says Romstadt.
Recognizing the soaring popularity of dine-at-home meal kits, Romstadt offers her own version with $25 all-inclusive dinners—such as sausage penne pasta bake with tossed salad and garlic bread—to feed a family of four. The meal kit selection changes each week and is promoted with an e-mail blast, in the club’s weekly newsletter, on its website and on social media, including Instagram and Facebook.
“Members place an order, and 15 minutes later they have their whole dinner,” she says.
Since she introduced the meal kits around three months ago, Romstadt says she has been “pleasantly surprised” at the enthusiastic reception from members. Unlike the usual cook-it-yourself meal kits available on the market, her dinners are already cooked and ready to serve.
Anticipating how many carryout dinners will be ordered each night, to make sure enough product is on hand and prepped, is a challenge that every chef faces. Making the situation even more complicated for Romstadt is the fact that 75% of diners are walk-ins, and there could be any number of last-minute carryouts.
“As a general rule, we take the number of reservations we have and double it, to account for walk-ins and carryout,” she reveals. “We also know that at the end of the month we’re going to get a crazy blast of carryout, because our members wait to use up their monthly food minimums.”
Skewing Younger
As a growing number of young families have become members, the calls for carryout have been increasing at Bent Tree Country Club in Dallas, Texas, according to Lance Warren, the club’s Executive Chef.
“Some members will ask for steaks, uncooked, and pay full price for them because they prefer our beef,” Warren says. “On a typical day, though, we see everything from a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich to a stuffed flounder dinner [as carryout orders].”
Thanksgiving is a major carryout time for all three clubs. For the past three years, the holiday to-go business at Bent Tree has grown 10 to 15% per year, Warren says. Last year, roughly 70 of the club’s 850 members purchased something, from full meals to quarts of gravy from the carryout menu.
Just as importantly, this increase in carryout represents incremental sales. “Carryout has not at all cannibalized attendance at our traditional Thanksgiving buffet in the dining room,” Warren points out. “The members who want to eat at home will do that anyway; we just make it more convenient and easier for them, because they won’t have to stand in line at the market and prepare the food from scratch.”
For Thanksgiving and Christmas, Bent Tree offers a “full-blown a la carte menu” featuring whole turkey or ham and all the trimmings, Warren says. In addition to the traditional sides, he offers some more contemporary choices, such as roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic glaze, and maple-roasted parsnips and carrots. “I do 80% traditional sides, and the other 20% is upscale contemporary selections,” he says.
The sides are offered in small, medium and large sizes, with the order guide specifying how many guests each size will feed. In addition to the order guide, Warren promotes the holiday carryout through the club’s quarterly newsletter and e-mail blasts. He orders the turkeys in June, based on past numbers and anticipated increased demand.
To prepare the carryout foods, Warren uses the banquet prep area. With three kitchens featuring 3,500 square feet of cooler space, he can prepare and package the cold items in advance of the pick-up rush.“Our orders are 50% hot and 50% cold, so we can get a lot done during quieter times,” he says. “Holiday carryout pick-up is like a moving train—but we know it’s coming, so we are prepared.”
Although not nearly as popular as Thanksgiving, Warren also offers carryout for Mother’s Day and Easter.
“We get most of the members coming to the dining room for those occasions, but we want to offer them the convenience of carryout if they would prefer to dine at home,” he explains. “It’s part of the club experience.”
On Valentine’s Day, members can even get an assortment of chocolate-dipped strawberries at the club. “I look at what the high-end grocery stores are doing, and ask members what they would like to see us do,” Warren says.
For the ultimate in convenience, Bent Tree’s members don’t even have to get out of their cars to pick up their holiday carryout. Warren sets up a station equipped with hot boxes, refrigerators and tables under the porte cochere, so members can just pull up and have their food handed to them.
Feeding the Masses
At Cedar Rapids CC, Romstadt also provides valet delivery for Thanksgiving takeout, as she processes “a huge amount” of holiday orders, selling everything by the pound, quart or pint.
“We sell about a dozen full feasts of turkey and all the sides,” she says. “And many members will purchase one or two a la carte items, such as macaroni and cheese, to complete their at-home meals.”
To keep the kitchen running smoothly, Romstadt assigns one person to manage carryout on Wednesday and Thanksgiving Day. This staffer adjusts spreadsheets as orders come in, listing the items to be prepared, specifying when to have each order ready for pick-up, and making sure each is packaged and labeled correctly and has reheating instructions.
Thanksgiving Day pick-up times are scheduled between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Cedar Rapids CC, to free up the kitchen to prepare and serve its family-style meal in the dining room beginning at noon. If the club’s holiday carryout business continues to grow, Romstadt says, she will have to find a way to dedicate a part of the kitchen to preparing and packaging it.
Last year, Thanksgiving and Christmas carryout, including everything from whole roasted turkeys, prime rib, honey-baked hams and barbequed ribs to pies and cakes, accounted for around $20,000 of revenue at the Country Club of York. Mummert filled orders for 21 26-lb. take-out turkeys, in addition to doing a buffet dinner for 400 in the dining room.
“Members can buy pies and cakes at lower prices at their grocery stores, but we have two full-time pastry chefs on staff who make them better,” he says. “Another very popular item is our seafood salad, which we sell for $35 a pound.” That’s more proof, he adds, that members will pay for better quality and unique items, in addition to the convenience of carryout service.
Filling Up with Mobile
For the past year, a growing number of members at Bent Tree Country Club in Dallas, Texas, have been using the club’s mobile app to order their carry-out food. This ordering option, which is connected to the club’s point-of-sale system, is especially popular with younger members who use apps all the time, notes Lance Warren, Bent Tree’s Executive Chef.
To prepare members for the introduction of the mobile app and the availability of online ordering, the club e-mailed guides to the members. “We want to capitalize on using the app to make the ordering experience even more convenient for our members,” says Warren.
Members on the golf course, for example, can order through the app and either pick up their food or have it delivered to them on a golf cart.
“It works out very well, because we don’t need anyone to answer the phone to take the orders,” Warren notes.
C&RB CLUB RECIPE
At the Turn Grab-and-Go Roast Beef and Horseradish Wrap
Yield: 1 wrap
Amt Ingredient
1 12-inch flour tortilla, warmed
1 oz. housemade horseradish sauce
(see recipe at right)
2 pieces green leaf lettuce
2 slices tomato
2 slices Swiss cheese
6 ozs. freshly roasted beef striploin
• Layer ingredients as listed in the center of the flour tortilla; wrap tightly and cut on slight bias.
For the Horseradish Sauce:
Amt Ingredient
1 cup heavy cream, whipped stiff
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup grated horseradish
2 tbsp. applesauce
• Mix all ingredients together.
For the Roasted Beef Striploin:
Amt Ingredient
4 lbs. beef striploin end to taste salt and pepper
• Roast the beef until medium rare.
Submitted by Gregory Mummert, Executive Chef, Country Club of York, York, Pa.
C&RB CLUB RECIPE
Monster Cookies
Yield: 15 large cookies
Amt Ingredient
2 lbs. butter, soft
2 cups sugar
6 cups brown sugar
2 cups peanut butter
8 eggs
4 tbsp. vanilla extract
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
4 tsp. kosher salt
6 cups oats
2 cups M&Ms
2 cups chopped nuts
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
9 cups Rice Krispies
Procedure:
• In a large mixer, using the paddle attachment, combine the butter, sugars and peanut butter on medium speed until light and fluffy.
• Gradually add one egg at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl often.
• Add the vanilla extract.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
• Add flour mixture to cookie batter in several stages, scraping often.
• Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the remaining ingredients by hand.
• Portion one cookie out of two scoops on a lined sheet pan. Three cookies will fit on each pan.
• Bake at 325º F. for 12 minutes.
• Cool completely before wrapping.
Submitted by Cynthia Romstadt, Executive Chef, Cedar Rapids Country Club, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
C&RB CLUB RECIPE
Cheeseburger Chowder
Yield: 3.5 gallons
Amt Ingredient
5 lbs. ground beef, cooked and drained
1 1/2 gals. chicken stock
1 gal. whole milk
2 qts. heavy cream
1 large white onion, small-dice
2 carrots, small-dice
1 lb. butter
1 lb. all-purpose flour to taste salt
6 Idaho potatoes, peeled and medium-dice
5 lbs. Velveeta, large-diced
2 qts. cheese sauce (recipe below)
For the Cheese Sauce:
Amt Ingredient
1 gal. whole milk
1 gal. heavy cream
1 pkg. American cheese
1 pkg. Velveeta
18 ozs. butter
18 ozs. flour
• Heat up the milk and heavy cream in large saucepot.
• Turn off the heat and mix in cheeses.
• In a seperate pan, combine the butter and flour to make a blonde roux.
• Stir the roux into the mixture and adjust consistency accordingly.
Final Procedure for Soup:
• Sauté carrots and onions in butter until softened.
• Add flour to make a roux; cook about 2 minutes, until nutty and blonde.
• Whisk in chicken stock and milk; bring to a boil.
• Simmer until vegetables are soft, about 15 minutes.
• Blend with an immersion blender, adding cubed cheese, cheese sauce and heavy cream alternately.
• Season as needed with salt.
• Steam potatoes until tender.
• Add potatoes and ground beef to finish chowder.
• Serve immediately or chill and store in an airtight container, refrigerated or frozen.
Submitted by Cynthia Romstadt, Executive Chef, Cedar Rapids Country Club, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
C&RB CLUB RECIPE
Bourbon Pecan Chicken
Yield: 8 servings
Amt Ingredient
8 skinless, boneless chicken breasts to taste salt and freshly cracked black pepper
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup clarified butter
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
4 tbsp. bourbon
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
Procedure:
• Lightly pound the chicken breast into thin medallions.
• Season the chicken breast with salt and pepper.
• Stir together the chopped pecans and panko crumbs. Spread the mixture out on a sheet tray.
• Spread a thin coat of mayonnaise on both sides of the chicken breast.
• Press the chicken breasts into the pecan/panko mixture, to coat on both sides.
• Heat the remaining 1/4 cup of clarified butter in a large skillet over medium heat.
• Place the coated chicken breasts in the pan and lightly sauté on both sides until nicely browned and chicken is cooked through (about 5 minutes per side).
• In a small pot, whisk together the Dijon mustard, lemon juice, brown sugar, bourbon and Worcestershire sauce until smooth. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, then remove from the burner. Whisk in unsalted butter one piece at a time. Do not return to the heat.
• Accompany the chicken breast with your favorite sides and serve the bourbon butter on the side.
Submitted by Lance Warren, Executive Chef, Bent Tree Country Club, Dallas, Texas
C&RB
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